The sky was incredibly mucky due to the haze at all levels. Ir was claimed that this was due to dust from dust-storms in Asia being blown our way by the jet stream. If so, that doesn't account for why there was so much of it at low levels.
There was a light turnout, including one woman who had just bought a
Department Store Refractor
Although the sky was murky and bright, the seeing was excellent.
The first indication of this was that we were getting images of Jupiter
and Saturn as good as we normally do when they're high overhead, despite
the fact that we're losing them into the West.
Peter Natscher was got a clean split of eta-Com (0.7") with his 10" Mak.
Inspired by his example, I tried it with my venerable C8 and got it too.
Each star was in the first Airy ring of the other, but there was real
dark space in between. This led to the obvious idea of observing the
brighter globs at 400x - Ohh, Ahh, Wow!
My trunk window dewed up almost immediately and papers got that wet
feeling, but the Mark Wagner Special dew shield kept my C8 dry the whole
time. This was the first severe test and it passed. The only trouble I
had with it was that it got a bit crinkled and started biting into the
light path. No problem, once I realized what was going on.
Although it seemed a pity to waste such seeing on galaxies, I made a little
headway on my H400s and picked up about a dozen. No big rush. There
are a couple of big, bright ones in Com and CVn I hadn't heard of before.
I don't remember their numbers offhand, but I'll definitely have to go
back to them. I'm starting to get into the two pages of Virgo, which
opens up new navigational challenges, such as figuring out which of
three galaxies in the field is the one on the list. In that region,
the fact that you've hit a galaxy is no proof that you're where you think
you are.
Mars was still low when I left. It was a sharply defined disk with
no features except a faint white mark at the pole and maybe another
on the limb. Maybe there's a dust storm there, too.
Normally, the moon, like the dawn, comes up like thunder. As I was
leaving, I saw that it had come up like a faint 'pop!'. The murk
layer dimmed it down to the point where it would have been comfortable
to observe it through an unfiltered C8. By that time, I was rolling
out the gate, satisfied with an observing session that was better than
the daytime sky indicated.